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Yahoo! changes trademark policies

Next week, Yahoo Search Advertising will no longer accept ads that try to sell …

In a mass e-mail to current advertising customers, Yahoo! Search Marketing has announced an update to the policies regarding the use of trademarked terms in Yahoo! Search advertising. The change, which will take effect on March 1, consists of removing the following section of the current terms:

3. Competitive Comparison Site: The advertiser's site offers detailed comparative information about the trademark owner's products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services offered or promoted on the advertiser's site, it clearly identifies on the landing page the competitive products offered on the site, AND ALL of the following are true:

The comparative information is detailed, spanning multiple dimensions (for example, price, features, ingredients, third-party rankings, ratings or awards, etc.) and clearly helps consumers to make an informed decision about the product or service, AND

The listing title includes the word "Compare" and makes clear to the consumer that the listing comes from the advertiser, not the trademark owner, for example, by saying "Compare Us to [Trademark Term]" or "Compare Our Prices To [Trademark Owner]'s", AND

The advertiser's listing title and description identify the advertiser and disclose the nature of the qualifying comparative content the consumer will find on the advertiser's site.

In short, Yahoo! currently allows, say, Nvidia to buy ads linked to trademarked terms like Radeon or ATI, as long as the ad text and the site it links to makes it clear that you'll end up looking at a competing product, and not at ATI's cards. That won't be allowed any longer, and companies that have gotten used to riding the coattails of a competitor's popularity may need to find other ways of promoting themselves. This should not affect comparison shopping sites like Pricegrabber or Pricewatch, nor should review sites like Epinions feel the burn. Those kinds of services are covered by the preceding two clauses in the trademark policy, and those terms are not changing this time.

You might wonder whether Google ads are any more lenient on trademark issues than the revised Yahoo! policy. Google's position is that it's really up to trademark owners to try to settle disputes on their own, but the search giant will step in and take action on complaints with a limited amount of research into the issues:

When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, we will only investigate whether the advertisements at issue are using terms corresponding to the trademarked term in the advertisement's content. If they are, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademarked term from the content of the ad and prevent the advertiser from using the trademarked term in ad content in the future. Please note that we will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint.

That's the policy for trademarks registered in the U.S. and Canada. For the rest of the world, Google will also disable keywords that are found to be in breach of trademarks. For North Americans, this is a somewhat more permissive stance than Yahoo!'s, in that you can buy ads that trigger off of trademarked keywords all day long, but it's also more restrictive in that Google makes no exceptions to the rules about trademarked ad content in some cases, like Yahoo! does. You could say that Yahoo! is moving closer to the Google policies with the announced move.

So why is Yahoo! removing this allowance, and why now? Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch thinks that the aim is to attract more of the big, corporate advertisers, and keeping them happy by giving their brands more protection. That certainly rings more true than Yahoo!'s own assurance that it's about delivering "quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks," and as a consumer, I'm feeling a bit shortchanged here. If I'm searching Yahoo! for "Xbox 360," I expect to see Microsoft's site close to the top of the regular search results. If I had been living in a bunker for the last few years, I might appreciate seeing a PS3 or Revolution ad somewhere, so I can go make up my own mind about what I like. It's not a problem for those of us savvy enough to refine or extend our searches a bit, but Grandma Moses might not be so lucky. And so the quest to lock us all into what we already have gotten used to continues.